Yet another strain of the COVID-19 virus has emerged in France, after the case was discovered in a person returning from travel in the West African nation of Cameroon. The new strain has now been identified in 12 people who may have had contact with the person, who lives in…
Health officials on the African continent are seeing a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases, with an 83% surge seen during the past week. The surge is driven by both the Delta and the Omicron variants, according to World Health Organization (WHO) experts who provided an update Tuesday. They warn that…
Authorities in Botswana held a Sunday night press conference to discuss the latest information about the B.1.1.529 coronavirus variant first identified there. In the meantime, southern Africans are asking: Where did this variant actually come from? That’s because Botswana’s government said Friday that the four B.1.1.529 cases reported last week…
Botswana confirmed on Thursday that a new COVID-19 variant, one that’s causing great concern in southern Africa and beyond, was detected in four people described as travelers. Botswana’s Presidential COVID-19 Task Force said the four cases of the B.1.1.529 variant were recorded on Monday. All four cases happened in people…
As European countries are experiencing a fresh surge in Covid-19 infections and are beginning to target the unvaccinated as the culprit, it’s easy to forget the yawning gap between the West and the developing world. In Africa, untold millions have been infected with the disease, with the number of deaths…
On October 7th, Senegal’s Foreign Minister Aissata TALL SALL presided over the official launch ceremony for the seventh edition of the Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa. Since 2014, the Dakar Forum, held under the high patronage of Senegalese President Macky Sall, has been one of the…
As the latest step in a broad programme of infrastructural development, Senegalese president Macky Sall inaugurated a new 300-bed level-3 hospital in Touba at the weekend, one of the most modern in West Africa. The completion of the 40-billion-franc Cheikh Ahmadou Khadim hospital is a major boost for Senegal’s healthcare sector,…
At the UN General Assembly in New York, the Democratic Republic of the Congo President Félix Tshisekedi highlighted the measures put in place by African nations to combat the deadly coronavirus – but stressed that the continent cannot overcome the disease alone. Instead, Tshisekedi insisted it will require dedicated support…
As with so many other facets of global wealth (and health) inequality, the rollout of the four Covid-19 vaccines produced by Western pharmaceutical companies and approved by American and European health officials – the “Big Four” of Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson – has quickly became yet another…
Africa is finally joining the rest of the world in providing the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccinations to its people, beginning with Rwanda and Kenya. Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Angola and Congo have also received their first vaccine doses, while Mali, Senegal, Malawi and Uganda are set to receive them later this…
African nations may have a better idea of what COVID-19 vaccination products to expect with an update from the global COVAX Facility issued Wednesday. COVAX, led by the Gavi vaccine alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization, provided a country-by-country breakdown in a detailed…
A video from Egypt, shared widely on social media, has brought renewed international attention to the COVID-19 pandemic on the African continent. The video, which has not been independently verified by AT, was shot at the El Husseineya Central Hospital in the eastern Ash Sharqia region. It appears to show…
South African health officials are grappling with a new wave of COVID infections, some linked to a newly identified variant of the coronavirus as the country closes in on 25,000 fatalities. The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) announced another 216 COVID fatalities on Monday. At least 150 samples from…
The Urumuri robot helping to screen passengers at Rwanda’s Kigali International Airport is just one of more than 120 health technology innovations that Africans are using in the fight against COVID-19. That’s according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) analysis of 1,000 new or modified technologies developed around the…
The globetrotting Teodorin Obiang is raising a few eyebrows again, this time for his stay at the tony Four Seasons on Voavah where he’s enjoying a lavish holiday lifestyle on a private island in the Maldives. Obiang, the son of President Teodoro Obiang and a vice president of Equatorial Guinea,…